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Resource Description Framework

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Handbook on Ontologies

Part of the book series: International Handbooks on Information Systems ((INFOSYS))

Summary

This chapter introduces Resource Description Framework (RDF), the W3C recommendation for semantic annotations in the Semantic Web. It will cover the syntax and semantics of RDF, as well as its relation with the W3C OWL Web Ontology Language. To address the mismatch between RDF and OWL-DL, the most expressive decidable fragment of the OWL standard, we introduce a novel variant of RDF(S), called RDFS-FA, which provides a solid semantic foundation for many of the latest Description Logic-based SW ontology languages, such as OWL-DL and OWL2-DL.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Sect.2 for precise definitions of RDF syntax.

  2. 2.

    See the RDF semantics document [9] for the complete list of RDF(S) built-in datatypes.

  3. 3.

    Readers are referred to [9] for the list of the RDF axiomatic statements.

  4. 4.

    We only focus on the core RDFS primitives, i.e. the RDFS predefined meta-properties introduced on page 5.

  5. 5.

    Again, readers are referred to [9] for a list of the RDFS axiomatic statements, which includes, e.g. [\(\mathrm{rdf:type}\) \(\mathrm{rdfs:range}\) \(\mathrm{rdfs:Class}\).].

  6. 6.

    Another reason that OWL-Full is undecidable is that it does not impose restrictions on the use of transitive properties [12].

  7. 7.

    Classes can be regarded as mega-objects in upper strata of the meta-modelling architecture.

  8. 8.

    Here we use the N3 syntax, instead of the RDF/XML syntax, as it is more compact.

  9. 9.

    In [15], the subscripts are not used.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Jeff Z. Pan

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  1. Jeff Z. Pan
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Correspondence to Jeff Z. Pan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Informatik, Universität Koblenz-Landau, Universitaetsstr. 1, Koblenz, 56016, Germany

    Steffen Staab

  2. Inst. Angewandte Informatik und, Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 76128, Germany

    Rudi Studer

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pan, J.Z. (2009). Resource Description Framework. In: Staab, S., Studer, R. (eds) Handbook on Ontologies. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92673-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92673-3_3

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-92673-3

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